SUMMARY: The current data deluge, courtesy of technology innovation and proliferation, has created new demands on marketing professionals. If nothing else, one takeaway for marketers is clear – they have unprecedented access to behavioral user data. Ongoing measurement is instrumental for determining what to optimize and test.

This week we look at the top metrics marketers monitor to evaluate and improve their webpages and processes.

Marketing Research Chart: Top LPO metrics tracked

We surveyed marketers on a dozen of the more common and representative metrics out of the multitude available on Web analytics platforms. These metrics reflect three broad types of visitor behavior measurement:

Traffic (simply counting, in different ways, how many visitors arrived)

Activity (actions of clicking, converting, staying, or leaving)

E-commerce (order contents and completion)

While the chart above represents the frequency of each metric’s use, it can look deceiving. Although the traffic metrics (visits, page views, etc.) are at the top, they are almost inevitably used alongside other metrics. Nevertheless, as these are the easiest metrics to measure, it is not surprising that they are used most frequently.

It was disappointing to see that “conversion rate” was not at (or even close) to 100% – in part the result of the continued disagreement about the definition of “conversion.” From the optimization perspective, conversion is simply the accomplishment of the objective of that page or process.

At the same time, it is important to consider that different metrics are relevant to different pages within the same site, and therefore may be used both simultaneously and independently.

For additional research data and insights about landing page optimization, download and read the free Executive Summary from the MarketingSherpa 2011 Landing Page Optimization Benchmark Report.

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